PlanItMetro

The final public meeting for the study of Metrobus Route 80 (The North Capitol Street Line) will take place next week!

You’re invited to come see and comment on the draft recommendations for improvements. The study team hopes to submit the final recommendations to the Metro Board this summer for approval.

The meeting is open to the public and will take place on:

Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Anytime between 5:30 pm and 7:00 pm
St. Anthony’s School
12th & Lawrence Streets NE
Cafeteria entrance at 3400 12th Street NE, ground floor

Read more…

Some bus routes will change when the Silver Line arrives late this year.

When the Silver Line opens, many bus lines will be reorganized – to serve the five new Metrorail stations, change routes that will become redundant, and to ensure an integrated approach to the overall bus and rail network.

The Metro Board of Directors approved the Metrobus service changes in December (details). Exact schedules are not yet  finalized but will become available as we get closer to the Silver Line opening at the end of the year.

60 bus routes serve the areas affected by the Silver Line, 13 of which are Metrobus routes. Metro has been working closely with Fairfax Connector, Loudoun County, and other operators to be sure all the changes work together and make sense. Generally, here’s what to expect:

• All 5 new Silver Line stations will have bus service
• Many Metrobus routes will be re-routed to serve the Tysons Corner area. Affected routes include the 1C, 2A, 2B, 2C, 2G, 2T, 3A-E, 3T, 15K, 15L, 15M, 23A, 23C, 24T, 28A, 28T, and 28X.  (See the more detailed Metrobus proposal).
• A circulator bus system will serve the Tysons area, including the new Silver Line stations in Tysons
• Many Fairfax Connector buses connecting Reston and Herndon to West Falls Church station will now serve the Wiehle Avenue Silver Line station
• 7 Loudoun County buses will move from West Falls Church to Wiehle Avenue station
• 3 Prince William County buses will move to Tysons Corner station
• Going to Dulles Airport? Metrobus 5A will remain unchanged, and the express Washington Flyer buses will move from West Falls Church to Wiehle Avenue station.

When does all this happen? All bus changes will need to take effect by the first day of Silver Line operations!

For more information on Fairfax County bus changes in particular, visit their extensive website on the Silver Line changes.

Regional Activity Centers in the core jurisdictions served by high-quality Metro service. Click the image for a full regional map.

Of the 120 COG regional activity centers in the Metro Compact Jurisdictions, 81 are now or will soon be served by high quality Metro transit, either Metrorail or the Metrobus Priority Corridor Network (PCN). That means that two-thirds of these activity centers are primed to support transit-oriented developments. The map above illustrates the activity centers in the core jurisdictions and their level of transit service. Click the image  for a full regional map.

Some jurisdictions have placed a greater emphasis on high-quality transit service when deciding upon areas to designate as regional activity centers.  The chart below shows the total number of activity centers per jurisdiction and the percentage served by Metrorail and/or the PCN.  The core jurisdictions (the District, Arlington and Alexandria) each have over 80% of their activity centers served by high-quality Metro transit.  The beltway jurisdictions (Montgomery, Prince George’s and Fairfax counties) have between 48% and 70% of their activity centers served.   Loudoun County, soon to be added to the compact with two activity centers receiving Metrorail service when the Metrorail to Dulles Phase II comes online, has the lowest percentage of activity centers served by Metro.

The relationship between regional activity and high-quality transit is no accident.  Economic activity gravitates towards areas of greater accessibility, including Metrorail station areas and commercial corridors — once streetcar routes — currently served by Metrobus. However, transit service can also be extended to areas of economic activity which developed due to good highway accessibility, such as Tysons Corner.

As the local jurisdictions continue to focus population and employment growth into these areas, Metro and other regional transit operators are working to connect them to the regional core and to one another through high-quality transit.  It is clear from the current levels of highway congestion that Metropolitan Washington needs more high-quality Metro service (bus and rail) in order to support the growth anticipated over the next 25 years.

One goal of Momentum, Metro’s strategic planning process, is increasing regional mobility and connecting communities.

About the COG Activity Centers

The activity centers list, recently updated by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), describes where the local jurisdictions plan to focus household and job growth in order to support regional goals of transit-friendly development patterns and sustainability. This updated list includes 120 activity centers within the Metro Compact Jurisdictions (including Loudoun County) and additional 19 within the COG planning area not served by Metro, including Charles, Frederick and Prince William Counties, and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

Recently we showed you a visualization of Metrorail, Metrobus and Circulator transit created by a STLTransit.  The developer had created the previous visualization from the GTFS file available from the WMATA developers resources page.

Metro regularly exports all of the data from our Trip Planner into a separate GTFS file which we share with COG/TPB for updating regional transit schedules in their travel demand model.  We are working to make this file publicly available.  In the mean time, we were able to share it with STLTransit who kindly created the updated fully regional visualization of Washington area transit, embedded above.

As with last time, this visualization is best viewed full-screen and in HD mode.

Some interesting things to note:

• Frederick County TransIT service use of timed transfers (or pulse points) at transit centers is very noticeable.
• MARC and VRE commuter rail are illustrated as white tadpoles, not to be confused with the colored tadpoles representing Metrorail service.
• The expansiveness of the commuter rail network becomes very apparent, as those white tadpoles shoot towards the edges of the map to the northeast, northwest and south.

STLTransit apparently cranks out one or two visualizations of a city or regional transit system every few days.  Check out their YouTube channel and subscribe.

On January 17th and 18th, two staffers from Metro’s Office of Planning attended a two day transit network design course, offered by long time transit planning consultant, transit blogger and now author, Jarrett Walker.  In transit planning circles, Walker’s recent efforts, culminating with “Human Transit,” have been very well regarded.  For many planners, his book has been a breath of fresh air in helping to demystify how complex transit offerings can be made more simple, customer focused, effective, and useful for everyday city life.  Many planners have an appreciation of the attention he has given to linguistics, and how word choice (i.e., the use of “transfer” vs. “connection” or “transit route” vs. “transit line”) can subtly reinforce or undermine certain collective beliefs about the usefulness of transit, or anything else for that matter.

The participants in the DC course were fairly diverse, although all of those in attendance had a vested interest in transit in some way.  Among these were urban planners, consultants, advocates, and transit planners, among others.  Care was taken to ensure that each working group had a included at least one transit professional mixed with other disciplines and backgrounds in order to facilitate a balanced discussion. Read more…

Every Metrobus has a bike rack on the front of the bus with room for two bikes. But if you ride the F12 or F13 bus routes around the Cheverly and Landover areas, you may have noticed a different kind of rack on one of our buses – with space for three bikes, not two.  Our Bus group is testing out this new style of rack on one bus operating on the F12 and F13 routes to see how it works. The instructions for using this test rack are the same as the standard racks.

Have you seen or tried this rack? Did you try the middle or back-most rack? What do you think?

Let us know in the comments below.

Metro is testing a new style of bicycle rack on buses with space for 3 bikes.All Metrobuses currently have racks for 2 bikes.

Bikes are allowed on Metrobus at all times, even during peak times. Unsure about how they work? See instructions for how to use the standard racks.

A few weeks ago we posted a video visualization of one day’s worth of Metrorail, Metrobus and Circulator created by STLTransit.  Upon first seeing this video, contacted them to thank them for their work and also asked whether the Metrorail could be made to stand out more in the video, to differentiate it from Metrobus and Circulator.  This morning, I received a link the updated video embedded below, a great improvement.  Metrorail trains are now shown as “tadpoles” instead of dots, which allows them to be more visible and better represents the carrying capacity of a train (800+ people) versus a bus (60+).  Check it out.

It looks best in HD mode full-screen.

While Montgomery County’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan moves forward through the master plan update process, the county has prioritized some of these corridors for more detailed study.  One of these is the Veirs Mill Road corridor, generally stretching between the Rockville and Wheaton Metrorail Stations.  Managing the effort on behalf of the county is the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) through the State Highway Administration (SHA) and the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA).  SHA, MTA, and Montgomery County hosted an open house in May to introduce the study to local residents and solicit feedback on some of the issues present along the corridor.  You can view the study’s webpage for more information, where you can access the May 2012 Open House material.

Strategic Importance

Why is the county advancing the study of this corridor?  One reason is apparent with a quick look at the area’s geography and relationship to major transportation corridors.

Veirs Mill Road (highlighted in black) in context

Read more…

This great video shows one day’s worth of Metrorail, Metrobus and DC Circulator moving across the region.Metrobus and Circulator are both shown as white dots, while the Metrorail dots are keyed to line color.

The video should be viewed in full screen mode in order to really see Metrorail.

This video was created using the data from the Metro GTFS data feed by STLTransit, who have made similar videos for a variety of other cities.

Are you eager to tell us what needs to happen to make bus service more predictable and make your trip faster?

Do you have a great idea to help move more passengers through heavily-traveled stations in Washington and Arlington?

Do you sit in traffic and think, if only there were a fast, quick, comfortable transit option, life would be so much better?

Have you noticed a great concept or idea in another city’s transit system that Metro should implement?

If the answer to any of these questions is “Yes!” then please join the conversation about the future of your transit system at Momentum: The Next Generation of Metro.  We are using asking the public about how we can better serve their needs, and among other ways we are hosting questions at wmata.mindmixer.com!